That sounds like the problem isn't Artisan but a problem with your project. Artisan loads your project on the command line, if there's an error anywhere in your project then it will fail. Routes, controllers, models, problems there can cause this sort of behaviour. Does your project work via the web?

Check the logs (/app/storage/logs) or turn debug on in /app/config/app.php to see if you can get anything more helpful

Maybe your mcrpyt installation has gone faulty? Check your modules with php -m and try re installing mcrypt. Happened to me once.

Hi guys, thanks for your replies.

Yeah, I checked the mcrypt extension – no problems there. Also the logs (which where empty). Everything was really weird.

However, somehow it managed to work out with upgrading Laravel (I was on the 4.0.* branch) and work through the 4.0 > 4.1 guide.

Took me quite some while, and it is rather disturbing to not know what caused it in the first place =/

I got this error when uploading to shared hosting. So I installed laravel again there using "softlinks" in cPanel. And replace, routes, controller and model. Now It is working fine.